Bug#501688: Getting dh-make-perl to use META.yml

[Paul Fenwick]

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G'day everyone,

Quick policy check for me: Should I be replying just to the bug, or to
everyone, including the bug?  At the moment I'm assuming the former, with
apologies to Gunnar, who's receiving this message twice. ;)

(Also apologies to

Gunnar Wolf wrote:

> Of course, a sensible behaviour would be to parse META if it is
> available (for dependencies), and only use M::D::I if it is not - or
> if specified via a command-line switch or so.

Looks like we're in agreement here!

> OTOH, as we have some upstream Perl people with more proper CPAN
> participation: How would it go regarding CPAN customs to update those
> stale distributions I mention? Making a new, minor-version upload of
> CPAN packages bringing them to updated standards, even if they authors
> are no longer active?

I'm not a CPAN admins, but I'm fairly familiar with the procedure when it
comes to stale distributions.

Put simply, if reasonable and multiple attempts have been made to contact
the author of a module, and a reasonable amount of time has passed, then
maintenance of the module can be assigned to someone else.  Usually this
means that module reassignment is successful, as the old author is happy for
someone else to maintain it, or never responses.

The big sticking point is if a module author responds, but says no.  Even if
they have no intention of fixing their code ever, CPAN policy dictates that
a module can't be reassigned "by force".  Luckily, this rarely happens.

I imagine that for once-off, "this module needs a META.yml" style changes
the same procedure would apply.  If contacting the upstream author fails,
then mailing modules at perl.org would be how one would start such a change.

Gregor wrote:

> We're always happy about improvements and patches.
> If you want to take a look at dh-make-perl please grab the version
> from our subversion repository:
> 
> svn {co,export} svn://svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-perl/trunk/dh-make-perl/

Thanks, I've got the code and am looking through it now.  Are general
"tidy-up" patches appreciated, or should I restrict changes to those
relating this specific bugs (like this one)?  In any case, changes for
tidy-up and bug-fixes will be sent in separate patches from me.

What's the minimum version of Perl I can assume for changes to dh-make-perl?
 (Currently it looks like it requires at least Perl 5.6).

Cheerio,

	Paul

- --
Paul Fenwick <pjf at perltraining.com.au> | http://perltraining.com.au/
Director of Training                   | Ph:  +61 3 9354 6001
Perl Training Australia                | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681

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